Hey all. I'm going to be making something loosely based around the theme Half a Brain. As is habit for me, I've gone into the jam with only the faintest seed of an idea of what I want this game to be, and started working on UI stuff until I figured out what the game will be. I'll try and keep on top of this devlog and post regularly; hopefully there will be something interesting to read here.

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So, the reason I picked the title "Half a Brain" is because it gave me the idea of making something with gameplay that involves having to control two objects independently, and having the challenge of splitting your attention between both objects.

I started work on player movement tonight. The clip above shows a paddle made up of two independently controlled bodies (controlled with the left and right analog sticks), and a beam joining them. The movement doesn't feel great at the moment but it's enough to play around and see what it feels like to control both parts of the paddle. Messing around in this test level gave me some ideas for interesting gameplay stuff.

My current thinking is that this game will be a Geometry Wars style score-attack challenge where waves of enemies come at you; but the enemies can only be hurt by touching them with the beam, and will kill you if they hit either of your paddle's bodies.

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Another 051 game that will require far too much dexterity for me to get far in!

Sorry!! It seems to be a running theme for me; I'm kind of obsessed with games that pull the player out of their dexterity/coordination comfort zone. Hopefully aside from the weird controls it won't be too difficult to play.

1 hour ago, Broxxar said:

Oooooh those triangles exploding is delightful to watch. Your games are always have that sweet ｇａｍｅ ｆｅｅｌ.

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At the end of last weekend I did some work on making the floor/backdrop look less placeholder-y. I had some vague ideas of having a grid of square tiles that ambiently undulate in the background while you play, so I looked into a noise generator plugin for UE4 that gave me some close results when applied to my floor grid blueprint:

Spoiler

I tweaked some of the settings until I found something I was more happy with, and put it in the game! Originally, the tiles were much smaller as seen in the clip below, but having so many meshes animating at once was causing the framerate to dip, so I settled for large, chunky tiles instead.

Spoiler

I replaced the tile mesh and the material to something nicer and called it a job done! The clip below also shows a post process effect that I originally intended to use for level transitions, but then I decided not to have level transitions so it's somewhat redundant now. I'll try and find a use for it somewhere though cause it's a cool effect.

In other news, a player death / game over state is now in the game! When you die, the game will submit your score to an online leaderboard and show you your current global ranking. I've managed to shorten the time it takes to fetch/process that data in the time since I recorded the clip below. Also new: spawn in particle FX!

Things I have also done (that don't particularly GIF well):

Working pause functionality and menu

Save system (for saving stuff like your personal best score, and any settings there might be in the game)

An alternate control method that I'll go into at some other point

Score multiplier system (that you can't currently see because there's no score HUD lol)

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Haven't been able to submit this yet unfortunately! I had a rough week last week so I was quite a bit behind, and then on the Sunday night there was a bunch of broken stuff, some of which was preventing me from packaging the game . I'm working on it though! Hopefully will get a build out very soon.

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Well, you probably know what my reaction is going to be: stunning presentation, great player feedback, clever mechanics, and too damn hard for me! I'm not a twin-sticks guy, so I could never really master the movement, but I did manage to get over 3000 which I was very pleased with!

The only thing I'd ask for is the option to change the shockwave button - I'm constantly on the triggers for shrinkage so I tend to accidentally use shockwave rather than tactically hold onto it. I'd much prefer right shoulder. I'm also looking forward to seeing some of the world leaders play this thing!